By Nicky Morris

Copyright hellomagazine

The author Julia Quinn has built her career bringing Regency London’s high society to life through her bestselling Bridgerton novels and their prequel, Queen Charlotte.

Now, the bestselling writer, 55, has received a royal seal of approval from the Queen, who invited her to join The Queen’s Reading Room Festival 2025 this month.

“I very much admire her,” Julia said of Her Majesty, who is a passionate advocate of reading and literacy, which she champions through her charity, The Queen’s Reading Room.

“I’ve always thought she seems like a really cool person. I admired her even more when I heard about this charity. I thought: ‘Well, that’s wonderful to do something to promote reading.'”

The first Bridgerton book was published in 2000, and the series follows the eight siblings of a noble family as they search for love matches while navigating the top echelons of London society.

The books have been adapted for Netflix with great success by the producer Shonda Rhimes, becoming one of the streaming platform’s most-watched shows and creating instant fame for stars including Phoebe Dynevor and Jonathan Bailey.

The whole series, Julia tells HELLO! in this exclusive interview, was inspired by a medical-school classmate of her husband, Paul Pottinger, who had a severe stutter.

That manifested itself in the hero of the first few episodes, Simon Basset (played by Regé-Jean Page), who has a speech disorder. “It made me think about what type of family support you would need. As literature is full of people with bad parents, I decided to give Simon very bad parents and this tragic background story.

“I thought: ‘He needs to marry into the best family.’ That’s how the Bridgertons were created, as a foil for Simon’s awful father. They were so much fun. They kind of took over the world.”

When it comes to collaborating on the TV show, she is “very hands-off”, although she does see scripts in advance. “I’m not going to tell Shonda Rhimes how to make television,” she laughed. “She knows what she’s doing.”

And she says she couldn’t believe how her stories captivated the world. “The biggest thing was how much it entered the global zeitgeist. Now, when people ask me what I do, if I say: ‘Have you seen Bridgerton?’, it’s pretty rare to find somebody who doesn’t know what it is.”

She was also overwhelmed when told that the actress Dame Julie Andrews would voice the show’s unseen narrator, Lady Whistledown. “I stopped breathing for so long I legitimately should be dead. That was insane. I still don’t have words for it,” she said.

When she isn’t writing, Julia works with the charity Landesa, which helps millions of people in developing countries retain land rights, enabling them to make a living for their families. She recently travelled to Kenya as part of her work as a goodwill ambassador with the organisation.

“I became involved with the charity because one of its founders lived next door. I was in a position where I was able to contribute financially more than I had before,” she said.

“But I also have a platform to let people know about it, because people don’t really think about land rights. There is a need to make sure people have food, medicine and education. But underpinning all of that is the right to your land.”

Now preparing to fly to the UK from her home in Seattle, she deftly avoids saying what happens in season four of Bridgerton. “I applaud you for asking. They have us on such lockdown. If I tell you, I’ll never see another script again.”